A wooden valyok was used for beating canvas while washing, for softening new canvas, as well as for beating flax and hemp seeds out of seed bolls. Zoya Nalogina, a resident of the village of Shoksha, Temnikovsky District, Tambov Province, donated this item to the museum.

Valyok is a wooden rectangular bar of a slightly concave shape with a cylindrical handle. It had different names in different villages — most commonly “valyok” or “kolotushka” (mallet), but also “varta”, “lapta”, “portomoynik” and “pralnik.” Valek was made of hard wood, such as birch, linden or aspen. Archaeological finds suggest that the form of this tool remained unchanged from the 10th to the 19th century.

Valyok was used in the following way: the woman placed her laundry on the footbridge, took the tool by the handle and with force beat the bottom surface of wet clothes until the plate of the valyok squeezed the liquid out of them. Then she poured a solution of lye over the laundry and pounded it again with force. The items beaten in this way were rinsed in the river, and in winter — in an ice-hole.

Doing laundry was a women’s job. People used to say:

From early spring to late fall, women washed in running water in the open air, kneeling on wooden footbridges. Soap solutions were used for washing, which were obtained at home from lye and soap root. The lye, which gave its name to a whole class of chemical compounds — alkalis, was obtained from a solution of ash. It was also called “buk” or “bucha, ” and the washing process itself “buchenie”.

To soak and wash clothes, people used to mix ashes with water, leave it for a few days, and then get a soapy solution, so concentrated that it had to be diluted with water. Otherwise, clothes would wear out quickly when washed with such a strong lye. Another popular tool was saponaria (or soap root). It was crushed, soaked, strained and the resulting solution was used up, trying to use up the whole solution at once, because it could not be stored for long — it quickly gets spoilt.

Housewives could do without the soap solution. If linen lost its original whiteness, it was placed in sour milk for two or three days. They also used bean broth and “potato” water: potatoes were rubbed on a grater and poured into warm water. Before washing, stains on woolen clothes were rubbed with an egg yolk.